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Making climate change personal

Global warming is more than charts and figures – it's a matter of human rights, activists argue.

By Allan WoodsOTTAWA BUREAU

Fri., Dec. 11, 2009

COPENHAGEN–When Patrick Condon stormed the Calgary office of Environment Minister Jim Prentice late last month he said he was following in the tradition of civil disobedience set by the likes of Nelson Mandela and Rosa Parks.

When Keely Kidner did the same at Labour Minister Rona Ambrose's Edmonton headquarters two days later, she claimed Mohandas Gandhi as her guide.

Amid the jumble of issues facing the international summit in Copenhagen, environmentalists are increasingly taking up civil disobedience tactics because they see the link between climate change and other defining struggles of the 20th century.

"Change can happen, it must. Apartheid was broken by just such a spirit. Segregation was broken by just such a spirit. We can do no less," Condon, a University of British Columbia professor, said in a statement after occupying Prentice's office Nov. 23. "With the climate crisis, the stakes are even higher."

Discussions at the Copenhagen summit are focused on the transfer of hundreds of billions of dollars from rich countries to poor ones and a green economic revolution to cut greenhouse gas pollution.

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But some leading activists are pushing for countries to consider the human rights implications of their negotiations – and fear their efforts may be coming too late.

Four years ago at one of the Copenhagen conference's predecessors in Montreal, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, an Inuit activist and 2007 Nobel Peace Prize nominee from northern Quebec, first presented a batch of testimonials to the inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

She argued that climate change in the Arctic was bringing a swift end to her people's culture, way of life and ancestral home, and as such was violating their rights, as well as their physical security, property and health.

Warmer temperatures and melting ice have made it more treacherous to hunt animals. The switch to processed foods brought diabetes and other forms of disease. The migration south led to homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse.

"With all the changes for us that are happening today, in terms of our culture that is under threat, it really is an issue of our right and our ability to exist as an indigenous people," she told a crowd of environmentalists and journalists Thursday. "It's really about our fundamental rights. There can be no doubt about that."

Watt-Cloutier said it's vital that activists step up their campaign to bring attention to the human rights violations stemming from global warming.

While Watt-Cloutier has been at it for years now, recognition of climate change as a human rights issue has only become widely accepted in the last year or so with various declarations of support from the United Nations and other international bodies, said Ulrik Halsteen, with the UN's High Commission for Human Rights.

Just as there remain doubts in some quarters about how much of an impact burning carbon has on the atmosphere, the human rights debate around climate change is beset by difficult legal questions, he said.

Those include such things as the liability of states or businesses whose actions, or inactions, lead to higher greenhouse gas emissions. For instance, who exactly would people in the Maldives, who risk losing all their islands to rising sea levels, blame if they are forced to relocate on a massive scale?

The human rights issue probably won't progress much over the next week at the conference as nations focus instead on pledges to reduce emissions or provide financial assistance to poor countries.

"We have had such a hard time just defending our ground ... and trying to get a reasonable amount of money ... that we have tended to take the eye off the ball a little when it comes to human rights," said Ronny Jumeau, a former environment minister in the small island nation of Seychelles and now its permanent representative at the UN.

Watt-Cloutier said it's essential that those most affected by climate change put a human face on the problem.

"It isn't just about ice and snow," she said of the problems in the Arctic. "It's about people, and it's not just about the furry animals that the people want to focus on saving. It's about the sustainability of communities in the Arctic and other places that really rely upon the well-being of their environment to be able to continue to practise an ancient culture that is extremely respectful of all things around us."

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